A Times Editorial

Delaying impact fee would add to deficit

In basketball it's called the four-corners offense: a stalling technique made obsolete by the advent of the shot clock. In Pasco government circles, a group of builder-friendly advisory panels trotted out their own antiquated version of the delay game. They want to slow down a proposed impact fee for park construction.

Delay the fee, said a trio of committees, until the county has more money available to staff and operate new parks. The committees championed, unsuccessfully it turned out, a similar slowdown on a school impact fee earlier this year.

Nice try. But county commissioners saw the recommendation for what it was.

"It's ludicrous," Commissioner Pat Mulieri said about potential delays.

Instead, most commissioners favored their own fast-break offense. The impact fee of $892 per single family home will be the subject of public hearings and a final vote early next year.

Here's why, as emphasized correctly by the commission and county staffers: Each day the county fails to enact an impact fee for recreation, the deficit grows.

That means no youth sports fields in Wesley Chapel and limited practice fields elsewhere, long lines for waterfront boat ramps along the coast, public swimming pools jammed to capacity over the summer and waiting lists for county summer day camp programs. It is common in fast-growing areas of the county where the expanding population is exhausting recreational space. A consultant projects the county will need $40-million worth of parks over the next 10 years.

Curiously, Commissioner Ted Schrader offered his own stall tactic Tuesday. Delay the park impact fee, he suggested, and partner it with a library impact fee next year. (A library fee of roughly $175-per-home is expected to be introduced in about four months.)

Schrader's suggestion mirrors the county's successful bond referendum 15 years ago, but it is misguided. The county does not need a sales pitch on the impact fee as it did for voter approval of new property taxes for parks and libraries in 1986.

There is no need to combine fees for parks and libraries simply to make the recreation assessment more appealing to senior citizens. A delay now simply allows developers an extended period of home-building before adding the fee to their purchase prices.

That's not to say there wasn't some consideration for the building industry. The county agreed to study the idea of a capacity assessment fee that is used in Hillsborough County for water and sewer capital costs.

The capacity assessment fee is a payment of an impact fee over a specified period of time, perhaps 10 years. To participate, individual developers must apply to the county to join. After their projects are enrolled, the impact fees are assigned to individual building lots. The home buyer, instead of absorbing the impact fee cost in the price of a newly constructed house, pays the fee over time as a separate assessment on annual tax bills. If the home is sold, the new owner is responsible for paying the fee.

Builders like it because it holds down the advertised price of their houses. It appeals to the county because the assessments -- unlike impact fees -- can be used to guarantee long-term debt. In other words, the county could borrow money and do capital improvements immediately.

The assessment, however, does not work without the prerequisite impact fee. Considering alternative payment options is fair. But, so too, is an impact fee charging new home buyers the cost of adding to the county park system.

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